Brooklyn Beep Marty Markowitz says he’s paying that $20,000 Conflicts of Interest Board fine just levied against him out of his own pocket.
That’s a surprise.
Because he has taken a different approach with the far-heftier sum he spent on lawyers trying to fight the case — which involves free trips enjoyed by his wife as she tagged along on his “official business.”
In fact, a spokesman admitted, the $125,000 he’s doled out from his campaign treasury to lawyers went “in part” to representation before the COIB.
“In part” doubtless means most of it.
It’s all perfectly legal, of course — though we wonder if his contributors had even the slightest suspicion where their money would be going.
Markowitz bizarrely tried to argue that his wife was entitled to accompany him on “official business” trips paid for by the governments of Holland and Turkey because she’s the first lady of Brooklyn.
The COIB said no way and hit Marty Mark with the huge fine.
But wait: Why should even Markowitz be allowed to go on free trips?
It’s not as if the foreign visits were vital to Brooklyn’s economy: One was to celebrate the 500th anniversary of Henry Hudson’s arrival in New York; another established a sister-city relationship between Brooklyn and Izmir, Turkey; the third was to promote Brooklyn tourism.
All well and good.
But if a trip is really necessary, shouldn’t it be funded from the city fisc?
And if not, then why go at all?
After all, a man with duties as, ahem, demanding as Marty Markowitz’s certainly shouldn’t suffer distraction.
Meanwhile, elected officials with real jobs have all the more reason to avoid freebie flights and such, and it’s astonishing that the Conflicts of Interest Board hasn’t figured this out.
At best it’s a sketchy business. At worst — well, who knows.
No surprise that Markowitz is such an avid practitioner, though.